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Serbia: Repression against ASI continues!

We are informing the public that the State of Serbia is continuing with its repression against our organization. This time in the form of police investigation of ASI General Secretary, Milan Stojanovic, under suspicion of committing a crime of “Motor vehicle theft with burglary, break-in and threat” for which the possible sentence is up to five years imprisonment.

Namely, in year 2006 Milan was a witness in an investigation held because of the same crime and which was dismissed soon after. Now, five years later, the prosecution has dug up this case, and Milan has mystically changed his role from a witness to accused. To make things even more absurd, Milan cannot drive, actually he has never even started a vehicle.

This is only a last (for the time being) in a row of framed judicial processes against members of Anarcho-Syndicalist Initiative.

We note that in the past year and a half six anarchists were accused of international terrorism, three members of ASI Vrsac Local Group were suspected of obstruction of justice and a Croatian citizen which came to Belgrade in support of his arrested comrades was more than six months forbidden to leave the country. The members of ASI have up to now spent in prison almost 1000 days, which is to say nearly three years. Not at one of the mentioned cases has the prosecution managed to prove anyone guilty! To all this we add a physical attack on Secretary of ASI Kragujevac Local Group by the police and numerous threats, harassment and hearings made by the police, as well as threats and attacks made by parapolice fascist groups.

Anarcho-Syndicalist Initiative is in a struggle for a society which will be based on individual and collective freedom, equality, solidarity and mutual aid; free of all forms of repression, hierarchy and authority of one man over other. It points to essential contradictions of a society we live in and injustice committed by the ruling class.

Because of that, the authorities don`t hesitate in use of all available resources in order to stop the work of our organization. They knowingly arrest and accuse the innocent people in order to silence every critique and assure uninterrupted exploitation, theft and oppression of the people.

This construction of accusations and forgery of evidence against our members must stop!

We demand the dismissal of judicial process against Milan Stojanovic, General Secretary of the ASI!

We demand the end of repression against our organization!

Union confederation “Anarcho-syndicalist Initiative” Section of the International Workers Association